The Bonus Boondoggle Explained!
Since learning of the massive bonuses earned by the Wall Street execs who drove their firms (and the economy) off a cliff last fall, I've been wondering a lot about what happened to the English language to render a "bonus" something granted to a highly paid executive - no matter what. I had always thought (and had always experienced) a bonus to be a reward for superior performance. Not, as we've seen this year, something expected in return for running a business into the ground and taking the nation's economy down with it. So I was thrilled to read an essay by Jon Danielsson and Con Keating on Vox explaining just how the bonus culture took over the financial community. Once upon a time in finance, according to Danielsson & Keating, bonuses were rewards for success. That changed when the financial partnerships that once were the norm in finance were replaced by limited liability corporations: "Partnerships have disappeared over time, and the p...